There is an interest in commercial and industrial applications to reduce the size of articles and devices, such as in electronics where devices have been made smaller and smaller. Micro- and nanostructured devices, for example, can be used in articles such as flat panel displays, chemical sensors, and bioabsorption substrates. Microstructured articles have found commercial utility in, for example, electroluminescent devices, field emission cathodes for display devices, microfluidic films, and patterned electronic components and circuits.
Various mold-based micro and nano-replication technologies have been reported, such as nano-embossing lithography, nano-imprint lithography, ultraviolet-nano-imprint lithography, and step-and-flash imprint lithography. In the nanoreplication process, replica quality can be negatively affected by interfacial phenomena such as wettability and adhesion between the mold and the replicated polymeric patterns. Such effects are particularly important for nanoscale features, due to the high surface to volume ratio of those features. In nanoreplication applications, where the pattern sizes of the mold are very small-on the order of micrometers to nanometers-conventional coating technology cannot be applied because a thick release layer on the mold can change the feature dimensions of the pattern.